Quote from: CIYAM on January 18, 2016, 06:40:55 PM

Those that actually own Bitcoin don't really care about being able to buy coffee with it - they care about not losing the value of their investment (so they don't need to see the block size increase *next month*).

Yes, and being pressured off-chain to transact because there's limited space in the blocks would be a rather big loss of value to most people. There are some people who would gain an advantage from deliberately keeping a small blocksize for as long as possible. They often express their fondness for a privileged and elitist chain where it's mostly just whales and large companies moving massive sums from time to time. If that heinous vision ever comes to fruition then it will no longer be an open system. Choose your bedfellows wisely, as you risk setting a dangerous precedent if you stifle every potential fork by dismissing it as a takeover attempt. Denying the freedom to choose now could bite you in the arse later and limit your own freedoms. Now is not the right time to "set things in stone", as some have argued for.

Quote from: CIYAM on January 18, 2016, 07:06:40 PM

If a "merger" were to happen then maybe that would be the best outcome.

Core could end this right now if they had posted something akin to this as their scaling proposal. But they didn't, so no deal.